General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Millennials Who Are Thriving Financially Have One Thing in Common [View all]daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Developers are actually building luxury apartments in college towns FOR students. Often parents buy the condo or house as an investment: the student lives in the place while they go to college while the parents make more money off the student's housemates/roommate. Then the condo/house can be sold at a profit after college.
Poor people go into debt during college. Rich people with good credit and liquid money to invest are positioned to make bank off the situation. Poor people can't do this.
At the same time, rich people may be contributing to a housing crisis in the local community if they think this property is such a good investment that they buy up more units and help push up a speculation bubble. The people who need to live there are competing with out-of-towners who are just looking for investment properties. In some cases these investors are from foreign countries. China is an avid investor in college towns because those properties are considered stable investments. Real estate investment firms go on junkets to Hong Kong to sell packages of US properties for Chinese people to invest in. Local real estate firms get in on the action by collecting local properties and packaging them for the bigger fish.